Internet consumption in Bangladesh rises by 63pc in FY18

A file photo shows a man browsing internet on a computer in Dhaka. Country’s international bandwidth consumption increased by 63.5 per cent in the financial year 2017-2018 compared to that of the previous year amid soaring internet usage in day-to-day life. — New Age photo

Country’s international bandwidth consumption increased 63.5 per cent in the financial year 2017-2018 compared to that of the previous year amid soaring internet usage in day-to-day life.Flourishing of local content, blooming of online-centric services and launching of 4G mobile services in February this year also helped in attracting internet users and bandwidth usage accordingly, said market experts.According to Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission data, international internet bandwidth consumption increased 261 gigabits per second to 672 Gbps at the end of June this year from 411 Gbps a year ago.In June 2016, country’s total international bandwidth consumption was 265 Gbps while it was 186 Gbps in December 2016 and only 8 Gbps in 2009.The number of internet users in the country increased to 8.779 crore at the end of June 2018 while the figure was 7.33 crore at the end of June 2017.A senior official of Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company Limited said that the total usage of internet bandwidth of the state-owned company was also getting momentum. ‘Currently the BSCCL is supplying 60 per cent of the country’s total demand and I hope that the scenario would be more favourable for the state-owned entity in coming days,’ he said.The lone state-owned submarine cable company has already got connected with the second cable which also supplies a huge quantity of bandwidth, the official said. The BSCCL also exports 10 Gbps bandwidth to seven northern states of India.Apart from the BSCCL, six international terrestrial cable operators – Fiber@Home, Summit Communications, Novocom, 1Asia Alliance Communication, BD Link Communication and Mango Teleservices – are in operation in Bangladesh and are importing bandwidth from India for meeting Bangladesh’s bandwidth demand.Market experts termed the growth in internet usage as ‘tremendous’ and said that there were still opportunities left to give a boost to the market.Per capita data consumption was 250 Kbps in Singapore in 2012, while it was only 6.5 Kbps in Bangladesh in 2013.Although mobile operators have the maximum number of internet connections, they are using only 30 per cent bandwidth of the country’s total consumption, said a senior official of the Internet Service Provider Association Bangladesh.